Drobo 5D and Drobo Mini with Thunderbolt Available for Pre-order, Final Pricing Announced

We covered the new Thunderbolt-equipped Drobo units last month, and they are looking like promising additions to the company’s lineup. Both Drobo units were slated for a July release, and they are right on track. You can now pre-order the Drobo 5D and Drobo Mini from a number of retailers including Amazon, NCIX, B&H Photo, and Tiger Direct among others.

For the uninitiated, the Drobo 5D is a five bay Drobo S with upgrades. It features USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt interfaces as well as an mSATA SSD to improve performance. Like the predecessor, it will accept standard 3.5-inch desktop drives. You can pre-order it now for $849.

The Drobo Mini on the other hand forgoes desktop drives to achieve a much smaller form-factor. It will accept up to four 2.5-inch laptop hard drives (or SSDs if you want crazy speeds). The Drobo Mini is further able to connect to your computer using either USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt. Like the Drobo 5D, it has an integrated mSATA port (not included). You can pre-order this little redundant storage system for $649.

After losing 6tb of data on one of two drobos that were three months old and having to deal with the complete black box that a Drobo is, I probably won't ever be buying another. (The extent to which you can troubleshoot your own drobo is that you can dump a diagnostic file that only their support can make use of).

They'd have to come out a hell of a lot cheaper for me to ever bother with them, again.